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Last week, Sturm, Ruger & Company (NYSE: RGR) stock took a licking in the marketplace after Ruger officials admitted their revitalization plan wasn't quite on the rails the way they had envisioned. Yesterday, Smith & Wesson Holding Company (SWHC) received a similar spanking after earnings came in below analysts' expectations of 12 cents a share. Notice there were earnings, they just weren't the earnings the market analysts expected. Rather than 12 cents, earnings were a nickel less. In exchange, Smith & Wesson Holding Company took a big tumble, losing nearly 40% (39.67) in heavy volume with more than 14 point...

An anchor has been attached to a proposal in the U.S. Senate that will slow down progress on the plan that could be used to permanently remove a person's right to own a gun in the United States, according to an organization opposing the measure. Eric Pratt, a spokesman for Gun Owners of America, told WND that Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has attached a "hold" to the plan, H.R. 2640, dubbed the "Veterans Disarmament Act," which means that while the bill remains alive, its advance will be delayed considerably. Pratt's group earlier launched a campaign encouraging citizens to call their...

The National Rifle Association, which did not endorse President Bush in 2000 and 2004 until just a month before the general election, is considering stepping into the presidential campaign fray early next year during the primary season, the group's chief lobbyist says. While the NRA waited until October in each of the past two presidential election years before endorsing a candidate, the group plans to take a more high-profile role early in the 2008 Republican nomination process. "Historically, we have not gotten involved in primaries. We traditionally wait until after the conventions," said Chris Cox, head lobbyist for the NRA....

Hundreds of thousands of veterans -- from Vietnam through Operation Iraqi Freedom -- are at risk of being banned from buying firearms if legislation that is pending in Congress gets enacted. How? The Veterans Disarmament Act -- which has already passed the House -- would place any veteran who has ever been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on the federal gun ban list. This is exactly what President Bill Clinton did over seven years ago when his administration illegitimately added some 83,000 veterans into the National Criminal Information System (NICS system) -- prohibiting them from purchasing firearms, simply...

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Rudolph W. Giuliani will go before the rank and file of the National Rifle Association on Friday, seeking support for his Republican presidential campaign from a group he once likened to "extremists" for its efforts to repeal the ban on assault weapons. But even as the former New York mayor strives to burnish his Second Amendment credentials at the gathering in Washington, a panel of federal judges in his home town will be hearing arguments on the lawsuit that Giuliani filed seven years ago aimed at punishing the nation's gun manufacturers for violent crimes involving firearms. Announcing the lawsuit in...

On the day South Florida mourned a slain police officer, Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson stopped in Miami and stuck firmly to his guns over what he says is the unnecessary call for limiting the right to bear arms. ''I do not think that abrogating Second Amendment rights is a good idea,'' the Republican said at the Versailles in Little Havana. ''The amount of violence created on the street by these kinds of weapons is very, very small,'' Thompson said. ``It's too bad. It's horrendous. Any kind -- whether it's a knife or an IED [improvised explosive device] or a...

LAKELAND | It's not the big sit-down dinner and speech at the Yacht Club that local Republican Party planners had hoped for, but the former U.S. senator from Tennessee and now presidential candidate, Fred Thompson, will be in Lakeland at 11 a.m. Saturday to speak to those attending a gun show at The Lakeland Center. Supporters said they hope he will return for a longer visit later in the campaign. But for now, Thompson, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president, is on a three-day, whirlwind tour of the state beginning today and ending Saturday... Thompson will be met...

Sen. Joe Biden is the embodiment of snide. Snide is the embodiment of the left-wing attitude toward gun owners. So when snide Joe Biden confronted a YouTube user who asked Democrat presidential candidates about gun control during a debate Monday night, what unfolded was a Teachable YouTube Moment -- the caught-on-tape embodiment of ideological snideness toward the Second Amendment and those who defend it. "Good evening, America. My name is Jered Townsend from Clio, Michigan," the YouTube citizen questioner began. "To all the candidates, tell me your position on gun control, as myself and other Americans really want to know...

The Roanoke Times is the latest newspaper to discover that just because something can be done does not mean it should be done. As reported by Michelle Malkin and others, the Times on March 11 ran an editorial titled "Shedding Light on Concealed Handguns" announcing that it was publishing a list of everyone in Virginia's New River Valley possessing a concealed carry permit. This type of story has become a ritual event with second and third-tier news outlets across the country. Others who have published similar stories include the suburban New York Westchester-Rockland Journal News, the Argus Leader of South...

Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY Voters removed a 3rd District judge who reduced the sentence of a sex offender and also caught the wrath of deer hunters and gun owners for an anti-hunting diatribe from the bench. In Salt Lake, Tooele and Summit counties, 54 percent of voters Tuesday said Judge Leslie Lewis should not be retained, a rare defeat for a sitting jurist. Lewis, a judge since 1991, was out of town and unavailable for comment, court spokeswoman Nancy Volmer said Wednesday. “I just don’t like the way this one was done,” said Greg Skordas, one of 40 lawyers...

Nearly two years after a dispute over a deer stand that left six western Wisconsin hunters dead, a new Rice Lake park dedicated to the hunters has been completed. Hunters Memorial Park will be dedicated at 1 p.m. Monday. The park, at Whitetail Drive and Linden Avenue, was built with private donations and will be given to the city of Rice Lake. North Builders Association donated labor, one of the two lots needed and some of the building materials. It also raised funds to cover other park expenses. Aspen Creek Services donated the second lot. The cost of the park...

1950's-era science fiction writer Robert F. Heinlein observed, in one of his science fiction novels in which he depicted future society as a kind of Wild West in which all citizens were armed and duels were commonplace; "An armed society is a polite society." In the American West in the 1880's, a man could find himself in a fight to the death over a perceived insult. Shooting a card cheat caught in the act was justifiable homicide in practice, whether or not it was codified in law. Disrespecting decent women was an offense that could put one on Boot Hill...

JUNEAU, Alaska — Starting Wednesday, a new anti-gun-control law in Alaska will allow handgun owners to carry concealed weapons without a permit in the seven Alaska cities where permits are now required. Gun owners will be allowed to keep their firearms in their vehicle, even if the car is parked on private property where the owner has a no-gun policy. And, some police chiefs say, local ordinances that ban guns from public buildings such as city halls will no longer be enforceable. Alaska’s new law forbids municipalities from passing gun laws that are more restrictive than state law. The National...

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Green Bay police is against concealed-carry. Figures. http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/news/archive/local_22121330.shtml

The newly appointed CIA Director Porter Goss, believes that terrorists may bring urban warfare techniques learned in Iraq to our homeland. If he is right, we could have a whole new war on our hands. The prospect is indeed scary. The idea of terrorist cells operating clandestinely in the United States, quietly amassing handguns and assault rifles, and planning suicide shooting rampages in our malls, is right out of Tom Clancy’s most recent novel. If not for the fact that the 9/11 attacks were also foreshadowed in a Clancy novel, I would have given the idea no further thought. However,...

BANGOR - A gun and ammunition tax that would create a fund to increase security at the state's courthouses has been proposed by several members of the Legislature's Judiciary Committee. The 7 percent tax would be in addition to the 5 percent state sales tax that consumers already pay when they buy guns and ammunition from licensed dealers in the state.George Smith, executive director of the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine, said on Monday that while the organization supports improved security at courthouses, it would oppose the bill."Making law abiding citizens who are gun owners pay the entire cost of something...

If there is one thing liberals love more than banning Christianity from public schools it is creating ineffective gun control laws. Despite hard evidence that gun control laws do not lower crime, stop violence, or make society safer in any way, liberals keep plugging away at our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. I am not going to weary you with a regurgitation of all the well known statistics showing how strict gun control laws are followed by sharp spikes in violent crime rates or with arguments asking the Left to explain the intellectual consistency behind their view...

Back before the November election, many mainstream media pundits - trying desperately to get John Kerry elected -- began to harp on President Bush's unwillingness to stop certain federal gun control laws from expiring as scheduled. But their propaganda efforts came to naught because this issue was a non-starter with the American people. The fact is, in this day of post-911 increased security consciousness, most average Americans simply don't want more gun control. They want more guns on hand to defend themselves and their loved ones in the face of possible life-threatening danger. Soccer moms are now taking handgun proficiency...